


Melancholia

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Series: Consanguinity [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Post canon, Translation linked - Russian, after the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Visceral reaction to <i>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melancholia

**Author's Note:**

> _"From Howth to Brandon in Kerry there was not a threshing-floor without a Danish slave threshing thereon,  
>  or a quern without a Danish woman grinding thereat."_
> 
>  
> 
> Charles Kingsley, _The Last of the English,_ on the failed Danish invasion of Ireland.

 

Not  
every household in Britain has its own Death Eater chained to the hearthstone.

A post post-modern hero is allowed to be childish, without irony, and  
Is allowed a social life along with his medals, and  
locks the pet in the cellar when entertaining although most of the time when sober possesses the small kindness of indifference  
Although bars had been real, once upon a time, the cage and the manacles, the creature in the zoo, last of its kind, the stares and the cameras. Push sticks through the fence: see if the animal bites.  
Look, mummy.  
It moved.

  
\- Isn't it lonely  
Potter says  
\- night after night?  
He says it as if he is curious, as if he really wants to know, but his eyes, over the rim of the firewhiskey glass, are bright and hard.  
\- do you get tired  
\- of your own thoughts?  
\- Do you ever dream  
And he laughs, a dry, hacking laugh  
\- of escape?  
\- Fuck you.  
Potter says, and smashes the glass on the floor, and takes the bottle to bed.

  
It takes half the night, crawling, to reach the first broken shard of the glass, which is not long enough  
And does not cut deep enough, along the vein,  
And will not stay in his grasp  
So he must reach further, crawl further, with ribbons of blood winding down his wrist, over the long tendons of the back of his hands, his unfamiliar, clean, misshapen fingers, all their joints barbed and angular as a hawthorn spray  
Blood dripping in perfect, crimson circles on the polished stone, beautiful  
As the berries of a Rowan tree (useful for...he forgets)  
But unfortunately,  
Charmed and  
Not as silent.

  
So that this particular dream is also lost  
And for the sin of dreaming  
And of not understanding why his own death was not, is not, coin enough  
He must endure again  
The grubby rifling of the scratched through thoughts of whatever remains of his mind.  
Which is not unusual but under these particular circumstances, performed by this man, feels like the scoring of fingernails on a blackboard  
Made of his own skin stretched on a frame  
Of his own bone.

  
It might be easier  
If there was pain  
Which is just one more way of loosing yourself and at least has the benefits of being familiar  
Also crawling. Also  
Serving on his knees, which he did try once  
Seeing that the only thing he has left to offer is himself, although he should have remembered that no one had ever found the gift of his body sufficient to atone for his mistakes  
Black or white  
And Potter  
Only laughed when his attempts failed.

  
Which leaves him  
On one side of the fire and Potter  
On the other with the whisky.  


 

 

 _Melancholia_ has been translated into Russian by Olga - you'll find it [here](http://olga.fanrus.com/novel/melan.htm).  
Please consider feedback to the translator.


End file.
